About

A mathematician turned computer scientist turning cognitive scientist, Stan Franklin holds the W. Harry Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professorship at the University of Memphis, was a winner of its Eminent Faculty Award, and was a founder of its Institute for Intelligent Systems. His research is motivated by wanting to know how minds work—human minds, animal minds and, particularly, artificial minds. For some years he’s worked on “conscious” software agents, that is, autonomous agents modeling a psychological theory of consciousness. Implementing the broad, integrative LIDA model of cognition, these agents conceptually and computationally model human and animal cognition, and provide testable hypotheses for cognitive scientists and neuroscientists. This endeavor, funded by the US Navy, has been the subject of some one-hundred papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. His graduate degrees are from UCLA, his undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis. He has authored or co-authored some hundred and fifty academic papers that have been cited almost 7000 times. His Artificial Minds, published by MIT Press and still in print, was a primary selection of the Library of Science book club, and has been translated into Japanese and Portuguese. He serves on the editorial boards of a half-dozen international journals, and has organized or given plenary addresses at major conferences and workshops.